Information Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon - A Real-time Dungeon Crawler on IndieGoGo

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon; Indiegogo

As a big fan of the old first-person real-time dungeon crawler Dungeon Master: Chaos Strikes Back, I wanted to let those of you who don't read our forums know that there is currently a Chaos Strikes Back- (as well Dungeon Master- and Grimrock-) inspired "blobber" Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon seeking €9,000 in funding on IndieGoGo:

Dungeon Kingdom is not just going to dust off the dungeon crawling genre; we also believe it will be a worthy ancestor [sic]. We expect the game to have the following features:

• Modern graphics and powerful dynamic lighting and shadows system.
• Multi-platform: Dungeon Kingdom is designed for and is strongly optimized to run on PC, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android devices! It has scalable rendering system, to make the most of any device.
• Advanced AI and wide array of creature behaviours. Don't be surprised if some smart creatures sneak up behind you to attack!
• Advanced interactions with the environment: for example, you can set fire to the curtains, as seen in the video.
• Cross platform features: for example, you can save your game on PC and retrieve it on your mobile to carry on playing where you left off.
• Multiple Environments: you won't get bored by the environments in Dungeon Kingdom, and there are lots of surprises to find!
• Strong story background: because a Dungeon Crawler can be more than just fight / kill / get treasure, we have created a solid back-story.
• Realistic Physic engine, allowing for new kind of puzzles and realistic animations.
• Different play modes are available to fit best any player experience.
• Modern, but not invasive, features such as achievements.
• To keep the game immersive, Dungeon Kingdom's world is made of continuous levels, there's no fading or loading between levels, except for major environment changes.

We could go on for ages, and also mention most of the traditional features like heroes, team creation, spell creation and many more...

However, I want to insist on something that will make Dungeon Kingdom stay in your memory when you play it: its level design...! A real-time dungeon crawler is also a matter of ambience, tension and immersion; we spend an immeasurable time on level design! We want to burn in your memory all corridors and pieces that you will explore in Dungeon Kingdom! We want to feed your nightmares! Those who have lost their soul two decades ago in the game "Chaos Strikes Back" and its great level design will love Dungeon Kingdom!​

You can also take a look at this early gameplay video:

​

A real-time dungeon crawler with level design inspired by Chaos Strikes Back with an addition of physics and "advanced AI" is something I can always get behind. Check out the IndieGoGo campaign here. (Warning: flexible funding.)

 

[Peter]

Visually looks basically exactly like Grimrock. Games coming out in this genre need to work to differentiate themselves from that game a lot more to not just seem like a shoddy ripoff.

 

[Decado]

I agree, the Grimrock vibe is too strong to ignore. It looks good, though.

The only thing that immediately raised my hackles was evidence of more square-dancing combat.

 

[Jaesun]

If this has actual melee (unlike Grimrock)

 

[t]

• 18 000 euros (23 500 us$) : Port to PS Vita, Windows Phone and Wii u. More creatures, more items, and of course more languages!

No.

 

[Jaesun]

You can play Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back on mobiles.....

 

[t]

Sure, they will develop a fucking game and then port it to three shitty obscure platforms with vastly different controls for less than 20k. That's not going to happen.

 

[Delterius]

Its not just that. That tier is a more of Everything PLUS the ports.

 

[Jagged Appliance]

Sure, they will develop a fucking game and then port it to three shitty obscure platforms with vastly different controls for less than 20k. That's not going to happen.

Windows Phone is doable but porting to Vita and Wii U is absurd and doesn't inspire any confidence.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Not sure if kanda is aware of this new thread, perhaps he can address some of these concerns

 

[set]

Sure, they will develop a fucking game and then port it to three shitty obscure platforms with vastly different controls for less than 20k. That's not going to happen.

Windows Phone is doable but porting to Vita and Wii U is absurd and doesn't inspire any confidence.

It's feasibly possible IF and Only If you are developing on unity and build a VERY very generic UI and IO code. Which I assume this creator is. Still won't be easy to accomodate for the minimum specs of a windows phone.

Promising WiiU shouldn't be allowed. You need to be a registered Nintendo developer which is not easy to get.

 

[kanda]

Sure, they will develop a fucking game and then port it to three shitty obscure platforms with vastly different controls for less than 20k. That's not going to happen.

Hello,
Sorry, was not aware about this thread, and launching the campaign was so much work. I'll reply to all question from now on.

 

[kanda]

I agree, the Grimrock vibe is too strong to ignore. It looks good, though.

The only thing that immediately raised my hackles was evidence of more square-dancing combat.

There are many car games, many RPG, many FPS game, many games of similar genre. I don't think a player will stuck to only one game if two titles of the same style are good. Especially true when the games are from the same family as Dungeon Master. I am a big player of 3d real time dungeons crawlers, and i love to play to all of them. And believe me, judging from the feedbacks we got in the Greenlight campaign, i am far to be wrong. Grimrock 2 will be great, and that's fine, i will love playing it. And so what ? Players won't stop buying games after it

 

[kanda]

Sure, they will develop a fucking game and then port it to three shitty obscure platforms with vastly different controls for less than 20k. That's not going to happen.

I am sorry i can't let you say this. I am a professional application developper. I have been writting ton's of applications on mobiles, pc, consoles. I have been working on any kind of applications, ranging from big budget games to child application or similuator for sea museum ! I worked on "Mankind", first MMORTS ever made...more than 12 years agowhen i worked for Vibes Studio (Cyro interactive was our publisher) ! I also worked for titles on PS2, PC and more at Monte Cristo Games studio, i wrote applications for iPad, iPhone, Android tablets and smartphones, i have also worked on nintendo DS Port of pc and wii games (Syberia, Safari Adventures and others !).
What i mean is simple: i am not a new comer in game (and app) development. So if we ask 20k, that's because we can do it. The game is already running PERFECTLY on Android, ios, PC, Mac and a few very early testers got the prototype in the screenshots. You can check on my own facebook acount and see some of them (sorry you'll have in translate in french but i am quite sure you can find it anyway) and you will see that it is really working very well. Unlike Grimrock (sorry to mention it but i am kinda forced to), the game has been designed from START to work BOTH on desktop and mobiles. If you look carefully all video, you'll notice something about the scaling UI system, you'll understand that all that have a reason, and that il allow the game working greatly on all devices types from my good old iphone4 to the PC or 7 inches tablets. Also, if you look VERY carefully you'll notice many details, like FOV adjustment once the inventory appears when the UI is at full scale(for smaller devices), to optimize de player's view, so he can still drag items fom floor straight in the inventory. There are many tips like this i had to find, it took me some months but it is working VERY well. As mentioned previously , i already got some testers, each time one of them play de demo, i receive email from the "game" giving me results from the embedded benchmark to improve the optimization even better arrcording the devices it's running on. From my history as developper, i used to work on so many devices...Handling UI on differnts screen and scaling the rendering to get the best performance is far to be a problem, this is my daily life, simply.

Worth to mention the artists working for me have huge history in game content creation as well. The main 3d artist have made lot of graphics for games from gameloft and others publishers (just a recent showcase) and is also used to models optimization.

Finally about the corst, we are all freelancers, and here in france, with this status that's quite cheaper to work that way than for classic studios.

 

[kanda]

Sure, they will develop a fucking game and then port it to three shitty obscure platforms with vastly different controls for less than 20k. That's not going to happen.

Windows Phone is doable but porting to Vita and Wii U is absurd and doesn't inspire any confidence.

It's feasibly possible IF and Only If you are developing on unity and build a VERY very generic UI and IO code. Which I assume this creator is. Still won't be easy to accomodate for the minimum specs of a windows phone.
Promising WiiU shouldn't be allowed. You need to be a registered Nintendo developer which is not easy to get.

Again, there are reason to post it. What is absurb is to say it's absurb without asking some details about it.

first, as mentioned by someone above, we switched from ou own engine last year to adopt UNIT 3D which i was already using for my job. This mean multiplatform engine. Of course that's not all...People may think , because it's multiplatform, that it will work same everywhere without doing anything specific, wich is totally wrong, and i had to override the graphics settings according the results from the embedded benchmark system i wrote and that is launched by dungeon kingdom the first time you play the game. It ranges from setting some upscale, to reducing the amount of post fx and others options, most by hand and decided by the game, as you can't rely only on Unity if you want to make seriously a multi-platform game. On many sides the game cares about the device it runs on. As an example the camera is smart and changing it's settings so that on any platform, any screen ratio you still keep the best view range and fov. there are countless algorithms running in Dungeon Kingdom, and i am not talking about future, it already works. Unlike some may think , i did not awake a morning in the previous week with the desire to make a dungeon crawler. It's something prepared for years. IF you go back long in the history on my FB, you'll find very old screen shots, even with an embedded Level editor on iPAD !!!!

About Wii U, well you should distinguish indie developers and big companies, which are handled differently by Nintendo or sony. And secondly, we are in discussing with some publishers, for which giving us access to nintendo dev kit is not a probablem as i already worked for them on several titles.

I dunno what i'll read next time when i'll come back to this post, but for sure if it's about know if we can or can't do it, guys you'll get answers to all your questions ! the project is STRONG and money asked one Indiegogo is not not due to random !

 

[kanda]

kjapi = Kanda Jeckle Api
Prototype fully working, lua script for logic. Made in 4 days, including level and items editor.
But no artists to make full game.

 

[Jagged Appliance]

Sure, they will develop a fucking game and then port it to three shitty obscure platforms with vastly different controls for less than 20k. That's not going to happen.

Windows Phone is doable but porting to Vita and Wii U is absurd and doesn't inspire any confidence.

It's feasibly possible IF and Only If you are developing on unity and build a VERY very generic UI and IO code. Which I assume this creator is. Still won't be easy to accomodate for the minimum specs of a windows phone.
Promising WiiU shouldn't be allowed. You need to be a registered Nintendo developer which is not easy to get.

Again, there are reason to post it. What is absurb is to say it's absurb without asking some details about it.

first, as mentioned by someone above, we switched from ou own engine last year to adopt UNIT 3D which i was already using for my job. This mean multiplatform engine. Of course that's not all...People may think , because it's multiplatform, that it will work same everywhere without doing anything specific, wich is totally wrong, and i had to override the graphics settings according the results from the embedded benchmark system i wrote and that is launched by dungeon kingdom the first time you play the game. It ranges from setting some upscale, to reducing the amount of post fx and others options, most by hand and decided by the game, as you can't rely only on Unity if you want to make seriously a multi-platform game. On many sides the game cares about the device it runs on. As an example the camera is smart and changing it's settings so that on any platform, any screen ratio you still keep the best view range and fov. there are countless algorithms running in Dungeon Kingdom, and i am not talking about future, it already works. Unlike some may think , i did not awake a morning in the previous week with the desire to make a dungeon crawler. It's something prepared for years. IF you go back long in the history on my FB, you'll find very old screen shots, even with an embedded Level editor on iPAD !!!!

About Wii U, well you should distinguish indie developers and big companies, which are handled differently by Nintendo or sony. And secondly, we are in discussing with some publishers, for which giving us access to nintendo dev kit is not a probablem as i already worked for them on several titles.

I dunno what i'll read next time when i'll come back to this post, but for sure if it's about know if we can or can't do it, guys you'll get answers to all your questions ! the project is STRONG and money asked one Indiegogo is not not due to random !

Ok, I'll take your word for it that porting to several platforms is possible for that amount of money. Here is the more important question: do you think porting to Wii U or Vita is worth doing? Maybe I'm out of touch but I can't imagine there is a significant playerbase on either platform that would be interested in a game of this kind. Would it not be better to invest as much as possible into the actual game rather than into ports to completely different platforms?

 

[kanda]

A bit later, new prototype, paid an artist with my private funds to create few assets. This version was including dungeon generator as well as 3d wysiwyg tool.

 

[kanda]

Home made tool again, new engine, working also on mobile.

 

[Scroo]

Hmm, I dunno, real time dancing again, meh. Needs good dungeon and puzzle design for me to get interested, and the option to set difficulty to easy so the combat won't be that annoying anymore.

But kanda sounds like the team really is into this project so well. And I'm also not sure if it's such a great idea to make the game exactly look like Grimrock, most people on steam will see it as a ripoff, no matter how often you explain them that it's not inspired by it.

But I wish the project the best, every indie rpg that gets released is a good thing. Just... gimme a turn based crawler now and then

 

[kanda]

Early 2012: included an embedded level editor running on iPad and later on Android

 

[kanda]

Team creation in 2012's prototype

 

[kanda]

And finally, begining of 2013, Unity, and new UI style. UI is still at bottom at this time. But i felt it was not a good idea, as you can't see the floor enough, and not suited to multi screen ratios handling, unlike the final version with the UI on the right.
What i want to show you guys, it's years of making DM clones by the love of the genre. And all sides have been explorered to gain exprience in making a great Dungeon crawler. you can pledge on Indiegogo with no doubt, we know where we are going.

 

[kanda]

Sure, they will develop a fucking game and then port it to three shitty obscure platforms with vastly different controls for less than 20k. That's not going to happen.

Windows Phone is doable but porting to Vita and Wii U is absurd and doesn't inspire any confidence.

It's feasibly possible IF and Only If you are developing on unity and build a VERY very generic UI and IO code. Which I assume this creator is. Still won't be easy to accomodate for the minimum specs of a windows phone.
Promising WiiU shouldn't be allowed. You need to be a registered Nintendo developer which is not easy to get.

Again, there are reason to post it. What is absurb is to say it's absurb without asking some details about it.
first, as mentioned by someone above, we switched from ou own engine last year to adopt UNIT 3D which i was already using for my job. This mean multiplatform engine. Of course that's not all...People may think , because it's multiplatform, that it will work same everywhere without doing anything specific, wich is totally wrong, and i had to override the graphics settings according the results from the embedded benchmark system i wrote and that is launched by dungeon kingdom the first time you play the game. It ranges from setting some upscale, to reducing the amount of post fx and others options, most by hand and decided by the game, as you can't rely only on Unity if you want to make seriously a multi-platform game. On many sides the game cares about the device it runs on. As an example the camera is smart and changing it's settings so that on any platform, any screen ratio you still keep the best view range and fov. there are countless algorithms running in Dungeon Kingdom, and i am not talking about future, it already works. Unlike some may think , i did not awake a morning in the previous week with the desire to make a dungeon crawler. It's something prepared for years. IF you go back long in the history on my FB, you'll find very old screen shots, even with an embedded Level editor on iPAD !!!!

About Wii U, well you should distinguish indie developers and big companies, which are handled differently by Nintendo or sony. And secondly, we are in discussing with some publishers, for which giving us access to nintendo dev kit is not a probablem as i already worked for them on several titles.
I dunno what i'll read next time when i'll come back to this post, but for sure if it's about know if we can or can't do it, guys you'll get answers to all your questions ! the project is STRONG and money asked one Indiegogo is not not due to random !

Ok, I'll take your word for it that porting to several platforms is possible for that amount of money. Here is the more important question: do you think porting to Wii U or Vita is worth doing? Maybe I'm out of touch but I can't imagine there is a significant playerbase on either platform that would be interested in a game of this kind. Would it not be better to invest as much as possible into the actual game rather than into ports to completely different platforms?

Well the indie community on these two platforms is good. Some indie titles have been selling well ! Also both platform have interesting device for controls in a game like Dungeon Kingdom. And both market lacks good dungeon Crawler
I have read many requests about a Grimrock port to Vita as an example...

I don't want DK to be a "PC only" game, i want it to touch as many players as possible. I even thought about a webplayer version...! (and i already tested it)

And as you can see, when i say on Indiegogo Dungeon Kingdom has been tested with Occulus Rit Virtual Reality headset, it's also true....:

Regards,
Kanda

 

[kanda]

Jagged Appliance

forgot to mention, an important feature, there is cross-platform sharing for saved game...So it make sense to allow the players to enjoy Dungeon Kingdom on many platforms